A Code of Ethics for the Social Web

You’re a food blogger who just got food poisoning at your friend’s new restaurant. Are you going to write about it?
 
This one question sums up a key ethical dilemma every content creator has experienced. When do subjective considerations outweigh objective reality? And when external factors influence your content, is it right to publish your work?
 
Surveys show web users implicitly trust blogs and social media over traditional news outlets. But while in most countries journalists operate under a code of ethics ensuring impartiality, fair and balanced coverage and disclosure of all relationships between the writer and her subject, the social web has no such boundaries. Without a code of ethics to ensure fair coverage, how can we warrant the trust we place in social content?
 
A Code of Ethics for the Social Web challenges the notion that we can trust our friends and argues that whether you're tweeting about your new shoes or blogging about homelessness, without a code of ethics to guide us we run the risk of becoming mindless advertising drones.

Bio

Morten Rand-Hendriksen is a web designer, developer and educator based out of Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. He specializes in highly customized and unusual WordPress themes and is obsessed with web standards, information design and making the web make sense for everyone.

Before turning his attention to the web Morten worked as a politician, musician, photographer and jeweller. The common thread that binds this past and the present together is his desire to enable communication, in all forms, and help people understand each other on a deeper level.

Morten has published several books and video series on web design and WordPress and runs the popular web design and development blog Design is Philosophy. He is the co-organizer of the Vancouver WordPress Meetup group, the co-creator of WordCamp:Developers and the creator of the 12x12 Vancouver Photo Marathon.